


and all that i was (i left behind me)

by CassandraStarflower



Category: Batman - All Media Types, W.I.T.C.H.
Genre: A couple of men chase our protagonist in Crime Alley, Amnesia, Crossover, Gen, She did die, and only the vaguest knowledge of batman is probably necessary, but there's no explicit mention of their probable intentions, even though she's alive in this fic!, no beta we die like will's altermere, you don't need to know anything about w.i.t.c.h., you literally don't need to know a thing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28489512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CassandraStarflower/pseuds/CassandraStarflower
Summary: “She wakes up alone in a graveyard, disturbingly.She scrambles to her feet and steps hastily off of the grave. How did she get here?…For that matter, who is she?”---Will’s Altermere wakes up, alive again. In Gotham. With complete amnesia.No knowledge of W.I.T.C.H. required for this to make sense!
Kudos: 7





	1. A Girl Wakes Up In A Graveyard

**Author's Note:**

> So this is what I am now… the “Will’s Altermere Deserved Better” squad. You can definitely read this with no knowledge of W.I.T.C.H., since our poor Altermere has no memories at all.   
> The basics of what you need to know if you’ve never seen W.I.T.C.H. is that an Altermere is an exact copy of a person with all of that person’s memories and abilities. A character from the cartoon, Will, makes an Astral Drop, which is a perfect physical copy with no memories or real intelligence (an Astral Drop is not living, unlike an Altermere), and a villain uses her powers to make the Astral Drop an Altermere, a living and actually perfect copy of Will. However, by the end of that episode, the Altermere dies at the hands of the villain and is absorbed back into Will.   
> The premise of this fic is a “what-if” where the Altermere comes back to life.   
> You don’t really need much knowledge of Batman, either, tbh…   
> Fic title from Unbecoming by Starset.

She wakes up alone in a graveyard, disturbingly. 

The girl sits up, confused, and looks around. She is sitting on top of a grave. The headstone reads  _ Jason Todd _ on it. 

She scrambles to her feet and steps hastily off of the grave. How did she get here? 

… 

For that matter, who is she? 

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know her name or anything about herself. 

Except that she’s in a graveyard, for some reason. 

She takes stock. Capris with pockets, slip-on shoes, and a pink-and-white crop top with a hood. None of it is appropriate for the wintry weather. There is literal snow on the ground. Why on earth is she wearing a goddamn crop top in  _ this _ kind of cold? 

She is so cold. 

She rubs her arms, shivering, and makes her way clumsily through the graves, desperately hoping she is heading  _ out _ of the graveyard and not deeper into the rows of graves. 

She obviously wasn’t on her own grave. Jason is a boy’s name, isn’t it? And she’s not a boy. 

The name doesn’t feel  _ right, _ either. 

She spots a gate up ahead and hurries her steps, shivering even harder. 

There’s no one in the little office, and she steps through the gate onto a long road. Down one way, there is a bridge to what appears to be a city. Probably best to head towards civilization, right? It’s bad to be alone like this, right? 

She’s not sure where she learned that from, but she doesn’t even know her own name or how old she is or  _ anything, _ so she figures, whatever. It could be something she’s learned from experience, after all. Bad to be alone, where bad people could find you. 

She has a brief, painful flash of memory. Of a woman looming over her. That’s it. Nothing else, no context at all. 

She walks along the side of the road, still rubbing her arms, and frowns at the starry sky. It’s nighttime. And really,  _ really  _ cold. 

She reaches the bridge and eyes it. It’s definitely not meant for pedestrians, but she hasn’t got many other options. 

She crosses as quickly as she can, wincing when her feet sink into snow and her ankles sting. 

The other side of the bridge is a wealthy neighborhood, and she gets chased away from the first door she knocks on. 

She keeps walking. If she stops now, she’ll never get up. 

She’s so cold. 

And she feels like something is missing. 

Well, aside from her memories and entire life, that is. 

She keeps walking. 

The big houses give way to smaller ones and then the smaller ones give way to empty lots and then the empty lots give way to crowded apartment buildings where there are people, walking quickly in patched coats and frayed jackets and dirty jeans and holey shoes. 

Kids huddle in doorways and women in red lipstick linger on street corners. 

The girl walks faster, brutally aware of her clean (wet) clothes and total lack of apparent care for the weather. 

People stare at her. She’s not from around here and it’s very clear. 

A man looms out of an alleyway and tries to grab her. She takes off in a run and he gives chase, at least, until it becomes very clear that she is far faster and more athletic than he is. 

She wonders what she did to get this athletic. 

(she thinks she may have run from people before, maybe.)

Then she keeps running, turning down a street and slowing again, trying not to draw attention. 

It’s hard, because again, she is wearing clean white and pink clothes that are definitely meant for summer. 

Also, her clothes are wet. Because she woke up lying in snow. 

The buildings are crowded together, the alleyways are dark and gloomy, and she tries not to get too close to anyone. 

It’s so cold. Her fingers are turning numb. 

She clasps her hands together in front of her, hunching her shoulders and trying not to trip over her own feet. 

There is a lot of garbage on the ground. She doesn’t know why she notices this in particular. But there is a lot of garbage on the ground. 

People are still staring at her. She’s not going to blend. At all. 

“Hey, sweetheart, are you lost?” a man calls. The girl walks faster. 

She’s absolutely lost. But like hell is she going to trust that guy. Not with the way he was staring at her like she was a piece of meat. 

“Hey!” the man yells. “I’m talking to you! Girl!” 

She hunches her shoulders higher and quickens her steps. He starts following her, walking fast. 

She turns down a street corner and freezes. 

It’s an alleyway. A dead end. 

She tries to turn, but he’s already there, grabbing her wrists. “Hey, bitch!” 

“Let go of me!” she shrieks, pulling at a thread of faint memory. 

(“Yell. Draw attention.”) 

He sneers at her. She struggles, tugging at his grip, and breaks free with a yank, stumbling back. 

He closes in on the girl and she backs away, eyes wide. 

She thinks for a moment that she’s going to die. 

A shadow appears on a rooftop above, but all of the girl’s focus is on the man. So when the shadow drops down and knocks the man out with a single blow, the girl freezes. 

The shadow is not a shadow. 

(She thinks shadows could probably be made corporeal. Really.) 

The shadow is a man. 

“Are you alright?” the man in black armor asks her. 

The girl has no idea how to answer that question. She’s got no memories, no idea where she is, no idea  _ who _ she is, and no idea what’s happening. 

She opens her mouth to say so, but instead, she bursts into tears. 


	2. The Girl Goes to the Batcave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girl ends up being taken to the Batcave. Bruce tries to figure out who she is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, one person left kudos and like thirteen people clicked on this, so I guess I’m continuing.

Bruce is not entirely sure what to do now. The kid is crying pretty hard and something’s definitely wrong here. 

For god’s sake, she’s wearing a crop top in January! 

“Do you have anyplace I can take you?” he asks, still discomfited. This is more Dick’s forte than his. 

“I don’t know.” the girl says, still crying. “I can’t remember anything.” 

Bruce frowns and crouches to be on the girl’s level. She’s kneeling in the snow and it can’t be comfortable. 

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“I don’t know.” she says. 

“Can you remember anything?” 

“No!” 

“Okay. How did you end up here?” 

The girl looks up at him with big brown eyes. “I woke up in a graveyard.” 

A chill runs down Bruce’s spine that has nothing to do with the weather. “What graveyard?” 

The girl shrugs. “There was a grave. It said Jason Todd on it.” 

Bruce’s brain grinds to a halt. “Okay.” he hears himself say, distantly, then he carefully unbuckles his cape and drapes it around the girl’s shoulders. 

She wraps it around herself, blinking. “Thank you.” she says, quietly. 

\---

The girl is wrapped in a cape and buckled into the passenger seat of a big, fancy car. 

The man who saved her is called Batman, apparently. 

She blinks, looking out the window. It seems like she ended up in a really bad part of town, which makes sense, though why it’s so close to the big, fancy houses she doesn’t know. 

She thinks even if he didn’t show up, she would have been okay. She thinks she’s been in fights before. 

She’s not sure why. Or when. 

It’s less cold in here, with the heat blasting from the vents. But she can’t feel her toes, which must be bad. She voices this. 

Batman drives faster. “It could be frostbite.” 

“Oh.” She looks down at her feet and wonders again why she is dressed like this. Wonders again how she came to be in that graveyard. 

She has the vague notion that she’s been asleep for a while. A long while. 

The Batmobile pulls into a literal cave full of cool technology and Batman gets out and pulls the passenger door open. She climbs out, frowning at her numb feet, and follows him to a medical area. 

She kicks the slides off and winces at her frostbitten toes. 

\---

Tim has had A Day today, one which started with an emergency Young Justice mission and did not slow down. 

So he is a little exhausted by the end of patrol. 

He probably can be forgiven for thinking the redhead on the medical bed was a hallucination and completely ignoring her in favor of coffee. 

It’s not until Dick gets back with Damian that Tim learns that the girl is in fact real. Then Bruce comes looming out of nowhere to let them all know that she’s got complete amnesia and apparently woke up lying on Jason’s grave. 

(Tim has to run to the showers to have a crisis after that.)

“So, you don’t know your name?” Dick asks curiously, sitting backward in a chair next to the girl, who shakes her head softly, eyes wide. “Don’t worry, B will try to find out who you are.” 

She nods nervously, sitting cross legged in clothes Alfred found somewhere, clothes that are way more appropriate for the weather than a goddamn crop top and capris. 

And slides. Can’t forget the slides. 

Bruce comes back from checking on Tim (currently still having a crisis in the showers), and goes to the computer, setting up a facial recognition scan. Apparently, he’d already taken a picture of her for it. 

“See? He’ll find you and we’ll be able to get you home.” Dick reassures her. She smiles tentatively. 

“Okay.” she says. 

\---

The scan takes a while, and Bruce ends up letting her go to sleep on a cot in another part of the room. 

Tim’s done having a crisis and has gone to bed. Bruce is a little concerned about the length of the crisis, but according to Alfred, Tim’s been up since five in the morning. 

Yesterday. 

He’ll probably be fine soon enough. 

Damian has also been sent to bed, along with Duke. Cass and Dick have insisted on staying. 

“So.” Dick says. “Um. She woke up on Jason’s grave?” 

“Apparently.” Bruce says. 

No one speaks for a few minutes. Eventually, Cass signs  _ Clothes. _

“Good point.” Bruce says, and gestures towards the neatly-folded crop top and capris. “That’s not in the least winter-appropriate.” 

“Nope.” Dick agrees, glancing towards the stack. “Not at all. You think she got teleported here somehow?” 

Bruce frowns. “It’s possible. Her accent is American. Maybe California?” 

Dick shrugs. “Maybe.” 

The scan finishes just then, announcing itself with a little beep, and all three turn towards the screen and freeze. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Make sure to leave kudos or comment to let me know you want to see more! Thanks!  
> Come find me on tumblr @cassandra-starflower!


	3. The Girl Finds Out About Her Twin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce finds Will Vandom’s records. Including the database of a mysterious organization called the Institute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I googled “what do lightning scars look like” for this chapter and thank goodness I did. Wish I’d done it for Scars, because lightning scars don’t actually look like how I portrayed them in that fic. Ooops.

The match is to one Will Vandom, resident of Heatherfield in southern New Jersey. It is a perfect match- she has an Instagram and every picture shows a redhead with a bob and brown eyes, exactly like the girl in the Cave right down to the tilt of her nose and the faint freckles on her cheeks. 

There are even a few pictures of her in that pink and white crop top. 

Bruce scowls. Something’s wrong here. 

Entirely aside from the fact that Will Vandom uploaded her latest picture seventeen minutes ago, which shows her at a sleepover with several friends. And it isn’t an old photo at all- it is brand new. 

Entirely aside from that fact, when he digs into the databases, Will Vandom comes up in three different databases. Her school’s system, the government system, and a third. One that Bruce has never seen before. 

The database belongs to some organization that he’s never heard of, called The Institute. 

Bruce starts hacking those records, with Dick hovering over his shoulder and Cass perched silently in a chair nearby. 

“Whenever some group’s just called ‘The Institute’ or whatever, you know it’s bad.” Dick remarks. Bruce shushes him- the security is very good, and that makes hacking it difficult. Especially since he doesn’t want to set off any alarms. 

But the security’s not good enough to require Babs. Bruce gets through. 

They have a file on Will Vandom, and it’s worryingly detailed. Bits of information about her friends, her family, where she lives, where she goes to school, her daily routine, it’s all in these files. 

An agent assigned to the case, apparently. One Raphael Sylla. 

The question is, what is the case? Why is a secret organization tracking Will Vandom? 

Does this have to do with the girl sleeping on the cot in the corner? Because that girl is clearly not Will Vandom. They may be perfectly identical, but Will Vandom is in the southern part of New Jersey right now having a sleepover with friends. 

She can’t be a clone. Clones aren’t the same age as the original. 

Generally speaking. Unless the original was cloned at birth. Even then, there is generally a few months difference. 

The point is, he’s not sure what the girl is. Or where she is from. Or what’s happening here. 

Or why she woke up on his son’s grave. 

\---

The girl wakes up several hours later, and it takes her a moment to remember where she is. She had a dream, one where she was flying with other girls, soaring through the skies on magic wings. 

She wishes she could go back to the dream. She almost knew her name, while she was sleeping. 

Or was it her name? 

She traces the scar under her shirt. She noticed it while changing, earlier- ridges of scar tissue across her side and back, feathering across her ribs and possibly her spine. 

There’s another scar up on her back, in the center between her shoulder blades. She can’t see what it looks like. 

She thinks it’s a strange one, though, because she touched it and it felt cold. 

She sits up now, rubbing her eyes, and blinks over towards where the other people are. Batman is sitting in the big chair in front of the monitors, which are humming and muttering to each other. Nightwing is leaning against the chair, and Black Bat is perched in another-

The monitors are talking. The girl blinks. 

Maybe it’s normal. The others aren’t reacting at all. 

The girl gets up quietly, wondering if they’ve found her yet, and pads over to them. 

“Oh! You’re awake.” Nightwing says, looking over at her. She smiles uncertainly and looks at the screens. 

There is a picture on the screen. It is not her. 

But it looks like her. 

_ Sister, _ she thinks. 

Why haven’t they found her? 

“Do you know who this is?” Batman asks her. 

“My sister.” she says confidently, and then she falters. “I think…” 

“Will Vandom is an only child.” Batman says. 

The girl stares at him blankly, not understanding. 

Will is her sister. 

Isn’t she?

The girl hesitates, staring at the screens. 

“Have you ever heard of the Institute?” Batman asks, and she frowns. 

She hasn’t. She shakes her head. 

Batman signs and turns back to the screens. The computer under the desk says, “He ought to go to sleep.” 

The girl blinks. They must be very good at ignoring the computer, she decides, when no one else seems to notice. 

She pushes away the little niggling feeling that she is the only one who can hear the computer talking. 

Instead, she sinks quietly into another chair, watching the picture on the screen. If she concentrates, very hard, she can remember Will saying something. 

_ “After all, we’re practically sisters!” _

Practically? 

Something is very wrong, she thinks dimly, tracing the scar under her shirt again. 

Very, very wrong. 

\---

Will Vandom is awake. She’s not sure why. She hasn’t been able to sleep at all, lying awake in Taranee’s bedroom. 

She gets up and walks to the bathroom, yawning. She’s tired, but she just can’t sleep. 

She feels oddly like something is missing. 

The Heart hangs around her neck, heavy and warm. She touches it for a moment, then blinks into the bathroom mirror. 

Something feels different. Will absently goes to touch the lightning scar on her side, the scar she gained when she absorbed her Altermere. 

It’s gone. 

The scar is gone. 

Will freezes, eyes widening, and stares at her reflection. 

_ What happened? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote most of this chapter because I wasn’t happy with how it was turning out, or I would have posted yesterday.


	4. The Girl Remembers Lightning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce finally sleeps. The girl tries to, but is stymied. Morning conversations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I re-Googled Lichtenstein figures for this chapter and found out that they go away after like twelve hours, so Creative Liberty and Magic Lightning to the rescue!  
> Also no, I do not have a schedule for this fic. Whenever I finish a chapter I post it.

Bruce isn’t about to turn the girl over to social services, since he’s not sure she even legally exists and her ‘twin’, Will Vandom, features in the files of a bizarre secret organization, so she ends up being taken upstairs to a guest bedroom by Alfred. 

It is not, no matter what Dick might say, because Bruce’s ‘adoption instincts’ are pinging. 

A ridiculous statement, really. 

Bruce does _not_ have ‘adoption instincts’. 

“Well,” Dick yawns, stretching, “I’m going to bed. You should too, B.” 

“Hn.” 

“Night.” Dick sets off up the stairs, trailed by Cass. 

Bruce refocuses on the computer. The Institute appears to be tracking metahumans. Bruce now thinks it is possible that the girl is some form of a clone of Will Vandom; after all, there are metahumans that can duplicate themselves, like Billy Numerous. 

The file on her indicates that the Institute believes that her abilities, whatever they are, are connected to a piece of jewelry she seems to consistently wear, and that her abilities are dangerous and could be very useful. 

What exactly her abilities are is not clarified. Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs quietly. 

There’s nothing he can do for now. He stands and heads up the stairs. 

\---

The girl is now pretty sure that the markings across her side are called Lichtenstein figures. 

Except that Lichtenstein figures disappear after a few hours and she doesn’t _feel_ like she’s been recently struck by lightning. 

Also, Lichtenstein figures are usually darker than the skin. Pink or something. 

These are white. 

(Magic lightning, generated by a powerful enough person with intent to kill, leaves marks for far longer than regular lightning. Magical lightning also leaves white marks on the skin, rather than pink or dark colors.)

She’s not sure why she remembers this stuff about Lichtenstein figures. Maybe in the past she looked them up after getting the scars. 

It sure is a possibility. 

Or maybe Will looked them up. That sounds more likely. 

For a moment, she wonders if Will’s Lichtenstein figures are missing. 

Then she wonders why she thought that. 

It’s been a long and horrible day. 

She buries her face in the pillow and tries to sleep. 

It’s hard to. The guest room is quiet and tidy, but she can’t shake the feeling that she’s in danger. 

What kind of danger, she doesn’t know. 

But danger nonetheless. 

\---

Will stumbles back into Taranee’s bedroom, rubbing her side where the scar was. The Heart hangs reassuringly around her neck. 

“Guys!” she hisses. The others take a few minutes to wake up, grumbling. 

“Could this have waited until morning?” Cornelia asks, tucking long blonde hair behind her ear. 

“No! My scar, the one I got after I absorbed the Altermere, it’s missing!” 

“What?” Irma sits up, confused. 

“Missing?” Taranee echoes. 

“Missing.” 

\---

Morning dawns bright and way too early at Wayne Manor. No one’s slept much, and the ones who were upstairs while the search took place are being updated on it now, while the girl sits at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice, frowning. 

The little sleep she managed to get last night was full of lightning. 

She thinks she _must_ have been struck by lightning at some point. 

And struck by something else, because she looked in the mirror this morning and found ridges of scar tissue in the center of her back, right between her shoulder blades, where the skin is also discolored, purple and black. 

The Lichtenstein figures go up to that point, too, like the lightning reached her heart. 

But surely she’d be dead if such a thing had happened, right? 

She sips the orange juice and watches the assortment of people in the kitchen, talking about her. 

It’s strange. Just last night she was waking up in a graveyard, alone, and now she’s sitting in a kitchen listening to a bunch of superheroes argue about her. 

She feels pretty unfazed, though. Her normal life must be super weird. 

(Well, given the purple-black scarring and the Litchenstein figures dancing down her back and side, and the weird little circular scar over her heart and the tiny set of parentheses on her chest just below her collarbone…)

She feels like she’s awake for the first time in a long time. It’s a strange feeling. 

“So there’s nothing you can tell us about your past?” one of the superheroes asks her. It’s the kid everyone’s calling Tim. 

“Well, I had a dream about lightning,” she offers, “and found some weird scars.” 

“Weird?” Dick (she’s pretty sure that’s his name) asks, frowning. 

“I think they’re called Lichtenstein figures. The fern stuff? Except these might not be-” she hitches her shirt up to show them the lower part- “since they’re white and I don’t _think_ I’ve recently been struck by lightning.” 

Cass (that’s what Batman called her) leans forward and touches the lower part of the scar. The girl jumps, startled. 

Cass leans back, frowning. 

“Um. Plus there’s one on my back, right between my shoulder blades… I don’t think scars are supposed to be kind of purple.” 

“Well-” starts Tim. 

“Not this color purple.” the girl clarifies. “Super dark purple. Almost black. And it felt cold when I touched it.” 

“No, that’s not normal.” agrees Batman. (Everyone calls him B, so she’s not sure what his name is.) 

She elects to not mention the other two scars. They’re tiny and faint, anyway, and probably not a big deal. 

It’s not like they _mean_ something, or anything. 

Right? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will and co probably won’t show up very frequently, they’re not trying very hard to solve this problem. They’re tired, cut them some slack. Plus, I want to stick with the Altermere and such for a while.  
> I had a killer headache for most of writing this (from about the point of discussing Will’s powers to the end) and only wrote anything because I am so incredibly bored (I hate headaches), but I hope it’s all readable and makes sense. I reread it and fixed it morning of the 8th.   
> If you're new to reading this and you really want me to keep going, please leave kudos and comment! I'll keep writing this no matter what because I am easily swayed by four kudos and the desire to give the Altermere a happy ending with the Batfam, but it's nice to be appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this appeals to someone. I’ll keep writing this if anyone’s into it, so please comment or leave kudos!   
> Come find me on tumblr @cassandra-starflower!


End file.
